Carrie (2026) Review

An almost great TV show that falls apart in the end.

Carrie (2026) is a show that adapts the Stephen King novel with the same name. For the longest time, we had seen Carrie adapted into films, but not yet into a TV series like this. We knew going into the show it would expand upon the story of the book. The show is a miniseries with eight episodes, but it seems like they are going to continue the story of Carrie (2026).

The book itself is relatively short, so they definitely added a bunch of stuff in the TV show to flesh out characters in the story. When they did that, I definitely didn’t have many problems with it because they adapted the best parts of the book and the parts you needed to see. I have yet to finish the book, as I am reading it currently, but it seems like we have seen the story time and time again, so it’s OK to see some new ideas be thrown in the mix.

The original Carrie film is regarded as one of the better horror movies of its era, and it’s definitely a certified classic as far as horror movies go. They made a couple others, but none of them really did much compared to the first one, and I think that this TV show will be regarded as one of the better adaptations of Carrie alongside the original film. I found the show incredible up until the ending. When I say the ending, I mean the actual last 20 minutes of the show because the last episode still had some pretty solid moments in it. 

I do like when the show adds some more things to the story, especially when it comes to fleshing out the characters; they were not fleshed out in the movies as much. For example, we see a lot of the teachers and fellow students of Carrie get shown a lot more.

We get to see their day-to-day life, not just what happens in school or right after school, so to speak. They show their personal lives, which gives depth to their character, and that really helps a lot in the show. I thought the characters were pretty well written as well. 

Mike Flanagan did Carrie (2026),and he also adapted multiple Stephen King novels, such as Doctor Sleep and Gerald’s Game. I thought both of those were really good, and Doctor Sleep was a standout horror movie. 

I really have to say the best part of Carrie might’ve been the casting and acting.

They have a few A-list actors in there, such as Matthew Lillard, but they really did just get the best people for the part, so we ended up seeing a lot of relatively unknown actors stepping into the fray. And those relatively unknown actors are probably going to be stars now because of how great they were in the show.

I thought that the casting of Carrie and Carrie‘s mother were definite standouts in the show. You have Summer Howell, who plays Carrie, and Samantha Sloyan as Carrie’s mom/Margaret White. Just about every casting was exactly what we needed for the show. They all give a really unique performance, and all the characters kind of have their own quirks.

Even all the bullies are different, which is the trope that sometimes a lot of horror movies screw up. You’ll see all the bullies are basically the same character, and there’s not a lot of depth to them, but this time they gave them all motivations as to why they are mean girls, so to speak. It gives them a lot of depth instead of them just being these evil girls in high school.

The show also does that kind of stereotypical thing that TV shows do.  The first few episodes are pretty solid, and it gets you gripped, and then about halfway through you kind of lose interest because they have to build up a lot of plot elements, but then the end kind of brings you back. I didn’t mind this as much, as this was a miniseries, but at this point, it’s probably going to be a full show.

I know that they confirmed the second season is coming. I don’t know how long the show will run because from here on out they’re going to be adapting things that aren’t from the book and stray far from what the original novel intended, so to speak. So the next season could be a disaster because they don’t have such great source material to draw from, but it could also be interesting, as we’ve never seen an extension of the Carrie story like that. 

I feel like I really have to get into spoilers to say what I really didn’t like about the show and what almost ruined it for me.

Beyond the ending of Carrie (2026), I really felt the show was awesome, and I didn’t really have that many complaints. It’s just the way it ended that kind of screwed it all up for me. You have all the great, pivotal, iconic moments that you would expect from a Carrie story in the show, but then they start adding an element that did bother me.

I didn’t have a problem with a lot of the things they added, but they started adding this element of these characters tracking Carrie with her telekinesis abilities. At first, I didn’t have a problem with that because it kind of reminded me of Doctor Sleep anyway, but the way they brought it all together in the end didn’t really work. Those characters that I just mentioned are barely in the show at all until the ending. It’s not even really a big plot point until the ending itself in Carrie (2026).

If you’re familiar with the Carrie story, she ends up getting bullied off and on throughout her journey in high school and then ends up becoming prom queen, and then the whole thing gets sabotaged by the bullies in school. She gets drenched with blood and then takes out her rage on everyone there. You get to see that in the show, but instead of it leading towards her death and the story just ending there as the way the novel intended, they decided to continue the story on. Carrie lives in Carrie (2026). 

Carrie ends up not killing her mom or killing herself as she does in all the other adaptations. And her mom is killed by these telekinesis people in a very odd way, which kind of takes away from what the whole story is supposed to be about. We also find out that Carrie’s mother is telepathic as well, which is something that the book didn’t do, and I felt that wasn’t necessary. As soon as we find that out, they just kill her anyway. 

The whole thing that rubs me the wrong way is that this feels less like a scary story and more like this whole telepathic people versus Carrie and her other telepathic friend. It feels just like Stranger Things at that point, almost. I will say it’s not exactly like Stranger Things, and I don’t think they’re copying it by any means, but we’ve just kind of seen the story before. 

It really felt like they were doing something unique with how they fleshed out all the characters, but then they threw this whole telekinesis group in the mix, and that kind of just sours things

I know they want to make the story feel bigger so they can make another season, but it really does hurt the character's arc in the first season. Now we are left without a lot of it in Carrie (2026). 

Back to the prom scene where Carrie ends up taking her revenge on everyone around her. When this happens in the novel, she’s doing it all on her own. She’s pissed about what happened, and she takes it out on every single person there at prom. But this time she ends up letting her telepathic friend, sort of a possessor, do all of the killing on her behalf. So she doesn’t even end up doing all the crazy things that you’d expect her to do. She still does some of it, but it just doesn’t have the same weight as the other stories because of that. 

Without having that ending, where she just takes it out on everyone on her own, it kind of just messes up the story. I didn’t have a problem with them adding a telepathic friend or even these telepathic people following them; it’s just the way they did it in the end. If they had announced these telepathic people and just kept them as a story beat throughout the story, maybe it would’ve been a little better. But I still felt like that just wasn’t the best angle to go with this character in Carrie (2026).

It just does so well when it’s not dealing with that story element. The way the other characters interact with Carrie is just so unique and interesting, and now I guess we won’t see any more of that. Of course we knew some of them would end up getting killed, and some of them kind of got killed off in a strange way.

For example, the way some of the teachers were killed off at the prom scene was super fast and didn’t make sense for as much character screen time they were given throughout the show. It’s kind of like they forgot they were there and just kind of threw them in there so they could add to the body count and make it more devastating. 

I still enjoyed the way the prom scene was shot and how entertaining it really was.

There was so much tension built up to that, and even though I didn’t like the way it unfolded, I was still pretty entertained by it. I will definitely watch a season two, but I have a feeling I’m not going to like it as much as this season, and I might tune out eventually. It just really depends on what angle they’re going to take because they have a pretty open-ended story in Carrie (2026).

I really like the dynamic of Carrie and her mother, and that’s not going to be there anymore. There won’t be a lot of returning characters from the first season because they’re either dead or written off. It will be interesting to see some of their surviving characters end up finding Carrie, but it seems like Carrie is going to be somewhere far away from the school she once went to.

I’m curious to see where they go, but because of the ending, I’m not as excited as I would be for season two. I think the best bet would’ve been to kind of keep it closer to the material and have Carrie kill off her mom and herself and kind of end it there. Or they could’ve had Carrie survive it, kind of like it at the end of Christine or Hellraiser where you see that the monster is still alive after all it went through.

Could have Carrie’s hand come out of the ground or her moving some objects around her, even though she’s underground. Or they could’ve kept a couple characters alive and ended up having the next season be about how she goes on with life. Of course she would be in trouble with the police and whatnot, but I just don’t really know how I feel about the ending as it is now in Carrie (2026).